Aware, Inc. (NASDAQ:AWRE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Eckel: So I’ll take the first part, and then I’ll ask Craig to add some more color. But as I said and we’ve said before, we aren’t able to issue press releases on all awards nor would we plan to. Often, this is limited to customer confidentiality agreements, and we typically focus our award releases on deals that are slightly in the new area of initial adoption like A Safer Walk release. It demonstrates a use case in a customer-facing shared services application. Our choice to not issue a press release regarding an award should not be considered indicative of not winning awards or the only awards that we received. Craig, do you want to add some more color on the awards and opportunities coming forward? .

Craig Herman: Absolutely. We secured several bookings in Q2. And since announcing our partnership with A Safer Walk and our first SaaS cloud-based ABIS award with Miami Valley that Dave just highlighted. This Miami Valley deal is a 5-year deal that will have a huge impact on our recurring revenue as we continue transitioning to a SaaS-based platform. We can’t formally announce every contract signed, but we are constantly winning new contracts as the fidelity of the pipeline continues to improve. So the opportunity type, size and targets vary greatly based on the market and by region. So this is where, I think, trying to pigeon hole it into one or the other is not our business right now. We continue to build on a very strong enterprise foundation globally.

We have also seen a surge in the ABIS pipeline and opportunities. This mid-market for ABIS has really opened up with some vendors moving out or narrowing their focus. So the ability for organizations to leverage cloud ABIS, for example, opens up opportunities for a customer base that was out of our reach 12 months ago. And finally, with AwareID, it’s a new market. And although deal size may be small in the beginning, it does open the door for these customers to grow substantially as their business grows through our usage-based pricing model. A Safer Walk is a really good example of this type of customer, but we are also seeing similar engagements in Internet banking, e-commerce, education and gaming markets. .

Matt Glover : Thanks, Craig. Our next question, are there any other large deals on the horizon that can make a significant contribution to revenue and earnings in addition to the ABIS implementation you just mentioned? If yes, what is the approximate probability they will have an impact in 2023?

Craig Herman: So we have several 6-figure deals. We have 1 to 2, 7-figure deals that we are targeting right now for and forecasting for ’03 and ’04, Q3 and Q4 of 2023. All of these opportunities, they have specific compelling events to get signed and implemented this year. So we are very confident we will get them done, then it will have a positive impact on our revenue targets for 2023.

Matt Glover : Great. Another question along that line. Your annual outlook implies some pretty drastic revenue growth for the rest of the year. What gives you confidence you will make it? How much of the outlook for the next two quarters is covered by signed contracts?

David Barcelo: Yes, that’s a great question, Matt. So Bob and Craig have already talked a lot about the success we’ve had with these recent bookings and the improved pipeline. Craig just walked you through a bit of it. But let me try to be a little bit more specific. So our first half results were below our growth targets, obviously, and that’s primarily due to the timing of awards and delivery, as we’ve highlighted here. But our second half will benefit from a significant increase in recurring revenue, which was already booked. That includes the large contract as announced in our earnings release, the expansion of renewals that we mentioned previously on this call as well as the cloud ABIS delivery underway that Craig was just talking about.